Breathe Deep
by bluekrishna
Summary: Written for July's writing contest on Aria's Afterlife Forum: "I Will Go Down With This Ship" judged by Palaven Blues. Summary: He fascinates her. The shaman can't help but notice how diligently Mordin works toward curing the genophage. What could come of a simple meeting of minds and ideologies? When Bakara realizes their two peoples are not that dissimilar?


Mordin does not scuttle.

Salarians usually do. She'd enjoyed watching them scuttle on Sur'Kesh from her cage. They sidle from spot to spot, as though at any second a predator may swoop out of the sky and carry them off to their deaths.

She'd recognized a difference in this salarian the moment she first saw him, barking orders at his fellow salarians in that research base.

He'd walked through her line of sight with grace and confidence. All eyes had watched him for cues. His every movement a statement of _what will be_. And no one thought to countermand it. He filled the whole area with his certainty.

Where the rest of his race seems wispy and inconstant as a breeze to her, Mordin stands out. Mordin was-_is ._ . . solid.

There is a growing admiration in her for this salarian, despite what sins his ilk had commited against the krogan people. But is his endeavor fueled by guilt? Merely guilt?

Did he, as Shepard so quaintly put it, walk on eggshells around her? Did he fear offending her? Seems silly. What more offense could be committed?

Wrex strides in like he owns the medbay and by extension, everything in it. Including her. His contemptuous glance at Mordin sparks an echoing contempt in her for the brutish male krogan. A brutish male with vision, but still as brutish as they come.

Maybe moreso, for Wrex is a patricide. A crime that once upon a time would have had Wrex strung up by his innards for carrion-eaters to devour. No deed fouler, circumstances notwithstanding.

But that was long ago. Times have changed, and not for the better. The Age of Sorrow has driven them all to the brink of damnation.

"Shaman. I trust they are treating you well." A haughty grin alights Wrex's face as he comes to stand before her. It promises violence at her word to the contrary, should it be required.

Bakara nods while she contemplates her answer before taking in a breath to give it, "-"

"Am doing all I can to see to her comfort during tests," interrupts Mordin. He turns to face Wrex squarely, finally fed up with the krogan's attitude, no doubt. She feels her mouth pull into a small smile at his pluck. He continues, "Would be farther along if not constantly interrupted. If Eve not continuously stressed by stream of visitors and . . . curious onlookers."

Wrex pulls himself up to his full height, looming over the salarian by almost a full head. "I was talking to the shaman, not you, pipsqueak!"

"Juvenile pejorative." Mordin sniffs in derision. "Will not dignify with response in kind. Please, leave before you contaminate my samples with your stupidity-"

"Won't respond in kind, eh? Seems like you just di-"

"Have stunner if you will not comply. Will simply carry you ou-"

"Ha! I'd like to see you try!"

"I do not try. I do."

Bakara sees the threat of impending violence like a rushing thunderhead on the horizon. She holds up a hand to forestall the charge Wrex must be planning. She says, with force, "Enough!"

Wrex shoots her an abashed look. Mordin has the grace to do the same before bowing his head. "Apologies, Eve."

"Apology accepted, Dr. Solus." Bakara turns back to Wrex, whose mouth pulls into a rebellious frown. She knows a protest is about to make its way out of it. Forestalling such with a look, she addresses the krogan leader, "And for the fifth time since we've left Sur'Kesh, I am fine. Do not worry for my safety, here among the commander's people. The commander you yourself hold in such high esteem."

Thus reminded, Wrex looks away. "I just . . . you know, don't want to lose our people's last chance at a cure."

"Then let the salarian work, Wrex. And, in time, you will have your legacy." She just keeps the bitterness out of her tone. A male looks at a female and thinks only of the sons she might give him. Of the female herself; nothing.

That _will_ change.

She catches Wrex's eye as he turns to leave. "If it pleases me." Her tone said, _If **you** please me._

Shock ghosts over his rocky features as he walks away. Doubtless, it never occured to him she may refuse him. _Let him ponder **that** for awhile._

Mordin approaches her once the doors close, one of his hypos at the ready. Sighing, she offers an arm. Bakara watches him as he rolls up her sleeve and prepares the injection site with some disinfectant. Always fastidious, he does so with quick little economic movements. She bends her ear to hear him as Mordin mutters, "Stubborn. Hot-headed. Little enough hope for future. Less when behavior suggests krogan will revert to bestial natur-"

He trails off as a flicker in his large eyes in her direction tells him she is listening. Bakara smiles with amusement behind her veil as the flesh around his eyes darkens. The normally cool and reserved salarian freezes, flustered.

Bakara lets a low hum, tinged with whimsy, leave her throat. "Shall I disagree? Shall I defend my people from charges I know to have so evident a truth in them?"

Mordin clears his throat, and continues swiping her arm with the swab. "Tactless. Apologies . . . ahem, again. For my rudeness."

"If you start apologizing for every slight, real or imagined, then we will be at it for days." She winks to tell him she jests. "Say what needs saying. Do what needs doing."

A tentative smile pulls at the doctor's lips. He nods, accepting her simple wisdom.

"As for Wrex, his heart is in the right place, though his thick and craggy head is still trying to bust through doors that may prove unlocked if he would just try to open them with his hand." Bakara smiles to hear Mordin chuckle. "He means well."

"Yes. The humans have sayings about that. Meaning well. Good intentions. Justifying deplorable means with satisfactory results." Put at ease, the doctor speaks in his fast and clipped manner. After a long moment, he comments, "That said, have seen many things to give me hope. Krogan united. Krogan focussing on rebuilding instead of conquering."

"Oh, they will think of that last. In time. But my sisters and I will be ever so . . . _persuasive_. The males will see the wisdom in our, ahem, advice or rue the lack of . . . comfort. Or cooperation." She hums a low and sinister hum. Then, she looks at Mordin and says, "Do you realize this is the longest we've spoken, you and I?"

Mordin pulls back, clearly startled. "It is, isn't it? Strange, but true. Months together at the research base, working on a cure without the other scientists knowing and I didn't think to initiate conversation."

"You were busy. And I didn't feel the need to . . . converse with my captors."

The salarian winces and suddenly seems so very old. "Torturers, you mean."

A long awkward silence falls between them. Bakara watches him, how under that thin skin, the weight of ages seems to pull his shoulders down. He can't be more than a handful of decades old, an eyeblink to her, yet aged he is. By circumstance. By being the bearer of his own shame. The shame of an entire race.

She knows what it is to toil under the incalculable weight of the past's mistakes. How it can seem so heavy at times that one cannot even breathe.

Far from taking away from Mordin, making him seem weak, it gives him a certain . . . dignity. An inner strength and determination.

It reminds her of a thing she'd only ever seen once. In the deep places of Tuchanka, where there is still traces of wilderness, she saw a tree. Ancient, it reached toward the tiny patch of sunlight streaming down through the cracked concrete. Bigger around than she and six of her sisters could encompass with their arms. Its roots struck deep enough to spear into the sacred earth where water still flows free.

Mordin is like that tree. Time has not withered him, only made him stronger. His roots are deep and his reach ever upward. Ever trying to touch the sun.

Bakara smiles at this imagery and touches his hands where they pause at her inner elbow. "When your people made the genophage, they only knew what we'd become after the uplifting. But did they really know who we once were?"

A wry twist at Mordin's mouth presages his response, "No."

"It's good to remember the past. The old stories. The beating heart of a people comes from knowing who and where they once were, not who they might become and where they might go." Bakara takes a deep breath and lets it out in a cleansing, even exhale. She watches him fiddle with the hypo. She says, "Are you ever going to use that thing? Or are you just holding it?"

With chagrin, Mordin looks down at the device. "Believe I may be stalling. This series of treatments will not be . . . pleasant. You will feel very ill. Nausea and worse."

She offers him her arm once more. "Do what needs doing. And while you are doing, listen."

Bakara barely feels the sting of the medicine hitting her bloodstream as she spins tale after tale: Kloha and the Sundiver Bird. The Coming of the Winter God. The Fall of Ursha, First Warlord.

Soon enough, the promised pain begins and she ends up laying on her side, pushing words out through clenched teeth and agonized gasps.

Mordin holds her hand tightly in his. His eyes awhirl in wonder at her tale-weaving. He holds her veil back when she needs to vomit and rubs ointment into the skin of her feverish throat when she cannot continue for the terrible dryness threatening to silence her.

She is grateful for that and, strangely enough, grateful that he is not krogan. She couldn't be weak in front of a krogan. Her office demands she suffer in stoic silence. That her pain be added to the collective suffering of her race. A trickle lost in a deluge.

What a paltry thing it seems compared to that ocean and yet, she cannot hold back a shudder or occassional whimper. Her womb feels like it is trying to invert or, perhaps, implode and take the whole of her intestines with it. She lets out a short scream at the pinnacle of agony's wave, then sobs in relief as she passes into its wake. Shaking, sweating.

No judgement comes from her companion, no censure. She finds that he has wrapped his arms around her for what little comfort he can give for the pain he has caused. Not merely guilt, then. _Compassion_.

The embrace feels strange. But pleasant. She thinks slender is not so bad, if slender can be as _solid_ as this. Some of his deep-rooted strength flows into her and she is herself again. Shaman, once more.

"I'm alright, now," she manages, between parched lips.

Mordin pulls away. Does she imagine a slight reluctance on his part? Then he turns from her, saying, "Wish I could say next time will be easier. Less painful. I'm sor-"

"No more apologies, doctor. If I were unwilling, I wouldn't be here. I would have found a way to die long ago, in the research base." She reaches out to grasp his hand. "You gave me hope in that place. You kept me alive."

"Not as much hope as you've given me. Would that I could return it a thousand-fold." He sits on a stool at her bedside.

"You shall. I have no doubt on that score, doctor."

"Call me Mordin. If I may not apologize for the many things, the _countless_ things I still wish to apologize for, then just calling me 'doctor' will not do, not any more."

" . . . Mordin. Feels strange to be on such genial terms with a salarian." Bakara sighs and closes her eyes, exhausted by her earlier ordeal. "My people have found a great friend in you. As have I."

Clearly moved, he sits down in a stool at her bedside. He hangs his head, eyes fixed on something in the far past. He whispers, "Was not always so."

"Enough that it is so, now," she chides. Her hand cups his cheek. She pulls his face up to look at her. "Remember the past, but don't be damned by it."

Mordin stands with a long, deep breath and walks to his medstation with its beakers and tubes and bubbling liquids in jars. When he lets the breath out, his shoulders square, ready to take on the burden of his task once more. His surgeon's hands busy themselves at the monitor.

"Do salarians have any stories?" she asks, in the silence that follows.

"Some. Most mythologies have been forgotten during the prevailing age of reason and science, but there are some parables that never die, aren't there?" Mordin hums a short musical phrase as he works. "Think my favorite one is, '_Why The Metricycloid Never Bothers With Pants.'"_

Bakara listens as the tale unfolds, discovering things about the salarian people she never knew before. That they have a sense of humor, for one. She rumbles a laugh as Mordin hops around the medbay, imitating a metricycloid(whatever that was) struggling with attire it clearly wasn't designed or intended to wear.

Wrex looks in while said scene is in progress, shaking his head in abject confusion. This makes Bakara laugh all the harder, until her ribs hurt from it. The scandalized male departs in a flurry.

When the wheezing stops, she says to Mordin, "You must come to Tuchanka after we cure the genophage. Visit many times, so we may tell one another stories. So my people can come to know yours without the hate that flavors our parleys now."

Mordin bows. "I'd be honored, Eve."

"As would I." She bows back, as best she can from her medbay bed. The future looks bright indeed. She cannot wait until the children born of the cure watch as Mordin tells that particular tale. She desires to see it so strongly, her heart _aches_ for it. "And call me Bakara."

* * *

Later, after all is said and done, the future still looks bright. If bittersweet.

The cloud of white particles streaming from the Shroud cover the landscape in a fog. She wishes them luck on their journey through the planet's atmosphere. _Find all my brothers and sisters. Give them joy._

As for her lost friend, she grieves in silence. For the brilliance of him. For what might have come to pass in time. In her mind's eye, she sees last desolate wave of the Age of Sorrow finally go out with the tide. This new grief, she places in its own spot within her.

The first drop in a new sea.

"He was brave," rumbles Wrex, at her side. Hope shines in his eyes like twin beacons. All her people stand taller around her, as though a great weight has been lifted. And so it has.

"More than you'll ever now truly know." She turns her eye back to the Shroud's tip, blackened and twisted. Debris still flamed up there. How much of that debris was him? "He faced the worst of himself. He looked shame in the eye and didn't falter. How many of us can say the same?"

"Not nearly enough, shaman," he replies, chastened. That he knows this shows her how much he's grown, too.

Turning a pointed look at Wrex, she continues, "A great tree has been uprooted to make space in the galaxy for us again. It is time for a reckoning. The reckoning of all reckonings. All sins must be addressed for us to have a clean start. So when our future comes rushing toward us, we will be worthy to meet it."

The krogan warlord starts and looks around, guilt drawing deep lines in his craggy, old face. "If this is about my fathe-"

"I think an appropriate punishment is for you to become a father yourself. So you know what it is to have sons; the pride and the peril. And what it must have taken for him to do the things he did." Bakara turns to lead her people from the valley, for there is still one great battle to win before the next age can truly begin. Wrex drops into step beside her. She pulls her veil to the side to flash a suggestive smirk in his direction. "So, breathe deep, Wrex. Breathe deep."

* * *

**Aw, dang. I almost forgot the author's note again. Anyway, so I always thought Mordin and Bakara could have lots in common. Grief, shame, bitterness. A need to right past mistakes. So, while this isn't really a romantic pairing, more of a deep friendship that could have blossomed in the following years(if not for the tear-jerking sacrifice that seriously had me curled into a weepy fetal ball), it still feels cracky to me, cuz of all the COULD HAVE BEEEEEENS! lol.**


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